Title: Ire
Rating: G
Warnings: Angst, slight slash, overwhelming bitterness~
Coupling: Crowley-crushing
Disclaimer: Not mine. Gneil and Pterry's. I relinquish
all claims on them, sadly enough. ^^;
Notes: Part two of the Tomo-beating-writers-block
series. This is another unrequited love fic, focusing again on Crowley
and what Aziraphale means to him - with a different sort of turn on the
relationship. Not a happy one, as you may have guessed from the title
- lots of speculation on the fall and the existance of a demon -
as well as shameless adoration and vocabulary-stretching.

I hope I'm not getting too redundant with these short works.
^^;

~Tomo Trillions
knivesnomiko.pitas.com

~~~~

You have absolutely no idea what you do to me.

You frustrate me, to no end. You are a wrench in the well-oiled
gears of my mind, your smile burns away the puddles of smog that have collected
over the years in the pits of my soul... You bring up shattered
memories so melted and sautered they can no longer be pieced together by
my trembling fingers.

You are the most unbelievable creature I've ever met, and yet, you know
nothing.

You don't know how unbearable it can be, to be here. To fall.
To you, falling is alien and strange, detached, impossible. You have
never laid awake fearing the hand of God would pick you from the vine,
have you? Never.

You'll never know - never - the searing agony of being pushed away ultimately:
your thoughts bent on the knowledge that your creator has deemed you unworthy
of even death. The fall is more than a change of status, it is the
signing-away of your soul, it is when the being that gave you life announces,
amidst the screaming of your aching wings and the superheated wind in your
ears, that He no longer cares to call you his own. It's being chosen
to a team full of those you hate, and can't help but hate even as they
become allies of sorts. You hate them all, you hate the God that
sent you there, you hate yourself.

Oh, yes, you hate yourself.

And you look for people to blame as you lay in a pool of your own blood,
clinging to the shredded pride that accompanied you on the way down, you
blame anything in sight. You look for a reason beyond your own idiocy,
because admitting that is nigh impossible.

You stare back at the hallowed Eden you have left behind. You
sieze on one nemesis above all others, and you hate Him, with a bitter,
burning, haughty hatred that corrodes your soul and the flesh housing it.

To fall is to have your soul, your ultimate, most true self, cast aside.
It hurts. It burns. It is, in its own way, death.

I will lose when it all comes down to it, in the end. Is that
why you tolerate me? Is that why you deign spend time with me, sitting
in small parks and feeding the ducks the way we do? Am I no
different from the animals you pick up at times and shelter from the pouring
rain? I wouldn't put it past you, in all your holy glory, to pity
me so intensely that you attempt to compensate for it, calling me friend,
dear, kind. You're that sort of being.

You're playing with me, though you don't realize it. You're taping
a ten pound note to a bit of fishing string and dangling it before me in
the aisle of an airplane. You preach redemption and wrap it around
yourself like a warm blanket - you are safe and secure in what you are.
From the soft, warm edges of your reality, you can't believe I'm still
cold, sitting across from you before the lurid furnace of your Father's
love.

I look at you....

You remind me of all the things I hate about myself, because you are
all the things I could never be. You're every word and phrase I am
no longer allowed to utter, you are the smiles I cannot bear. You
deftly evade my tempting without a thought, your heart and soul completely
sure - in a way I was never able to achieve when such temptations were
offered to me.

I slipped, you know, rather than plummet of my own free will.
I stepped on one loose foothold that shifted and creaked beneath my weight,
then went spiraling down after all the rest had dissappeared into the gaping
pit. There's no honor in slipping, the demons say, because I didn't
mean to fall, I never chose the nihilism the rest of them preached.
I never really understood divinity.

And I didn't dive, I did an enormous belly-flop into the center of Hell.
There's no honor in tumbling down and landing in the center of a kingdom
those treading before you have already built, raising the towers and walls
and appointing themselves Dukes and Generals. There is no place in
a world like that. I was one of the last angels to fall, and I landed
in a world that, to me, was no more fair than the heavenly oasis I had
abandonded.

Apples. Everything is about apples.

It's as if all the bad fruit fell during the first shuddering storm,
leaving the rich orchard fat with the large, round, strong ones.
The rest of the lot rots at the roots of the tree of life. Existence.
Whatever.

Lucifer Morningstar, Lord of the Offal...

He and I are the same, you know. No matter what airs and confidences
he pronounces for himself, he is no more than another fallen angel, nursing
his broken wings. When things boil down, he will be the ultimate
loser, and he will fade and fall from power without mourners. His
casket will be a beautiful thing of stone and iron, but flowerless.

He and we have chosen the pathway that will never be freed from agony
or reconciled with the bretheren they left behind. He chose pain,
fear, lascivious pleasure. He is fighting against the one that created
him - who created everything - and he will never have the power
his parent divested in creating this world. He will lose.

He knows it. We all know it. How could we not? The
great dillusion of the damned is the belief that strength lies in originality
- original sin, original damnation, original fall. Demonkind struts,
it preens, it laughs as God holds it in the palm of His wide hands, ready
to be crushed in half a breath, no more than eggshells to His strength.
Because he is a kind God - or perhaps a cruel God - he allows us to boast
and brag, to be. Because maybe, despite our attempts to make Him
hate us, we are still beings of His own hands....

We try to make up for it. We save face, naturally, always.
Hubris is the second soul, at the heart of every demonic denizen, whatever
the circumstance. When I face you, God, the world, I hold my ostentatious
mask to my lips - you would never suspect that beneath the confident persona
there is a terrified, stinking, sullen soul, burnt and jaded and sad.

Lonely. Baked so long in the inferno of heat and fire that my
soul is ice.

If your smile as you answer the door and beckon me take part in the
warm and company beyond the portal is a sign of your pity, then pity me
please, Angel of the Eastern Gate. If that is what it takes
for you to allow me to remain by your side, then for the love of all, pity
me. Pity the damned, for we will never rise again, pity the headstrong
friend who would sooner cease to be than leave your side, though you will
never know. Salve my burns with your cool blue words and tease me
gently, never giving an inch, never pushing too far. Be with me.

Love me with your heavenly eyes and perhaps my Father-gone will see
me and love me again. Perhaps, after six thousand year, His ire has
faded from the burning brand it once had been.... Were I redeemed
in your gaze, would He look again at what He cast aside as scrap?
Were I worthy to you, would all of heaven call my name and welcome me to
the realm I have been denied? The place where only hope exists?

The dillusion of the damned. A dream. A desire. Nothing
more. To ask for more would be begging, and I cannot beg - I fell
for the sake of my pride and self, to relinquish that is to tempt my lot,
to lose everything.

May you never fall. May you never join me in my damnation, may
you always look down, always voice in choirs, praising your liege.
May you pity me into the ambiguous eternity, and stay by my side, as I
follow you like a puppy bereft of a worthy master.

Pity me with your soft lips, and never learn what you do to me, angel.

It's all I dare to ask for.

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